Practical missile defense systems must consider the efficient use of limited defensive resources. The deployment of decoys and other countermeasures is a typical strategy employed to cause defense systems to exhaust their defensive resources on non-critical targets. A midcourse discrimination system is designed to reliably differentiate between true threats and false threats referred to as decoys. To date, the development of reliable, robust midcourse discrimination techniques that offer a degree of immunity to envisioned countermeasures have not been demonstrated. Many of the envisioned midcourse discrimination techniques rely on large, expensive systems that are typically space-based. Other proposed systems include specialized or customized equipment that is expensive and not readily available from equipment manufacturers.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have a robust system that efficiently and effectively differentiates between targets of interest (such as warheads) and countermeasures (such as decoy balloons). In addition, it is desirable to have a non-space-based midcourse discrimination system that employs relatively mature, inexpensive subsystems and components. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.